Sepsis survivor's startup Septest raises £1 million to speed diagnosis
What's the deal? SeptestDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Leeds-based diagnostics startup, has raised £1 million in a seed round to develop TRISEP, a finger-prick blood test designed to flag infection and inflammation in about 15 minutes. Oxford TechnologyDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Keiretsu Forum LondonDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and the FundMyPitchDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → investor network backed the round, which was announced in September 2025.
Why now? Founder Alistair Wilson, a sepsis survivor, started the company in late 2022 to close what it calls the "uncertainty gap" early in the patient pathway. The startup added chief executive Jag Grewal in September 2025, a diagnostics veteran of more than 13 years at Omega DiagnosticsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and Cambridge Nutritional SciencesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
What's the endgame? TRISEP requires no dedicated analyzer. The lateral-flow device uses roughly 20 microliters of whole blood to measure signals tied to inflammatory, bacterial, viral, and fungal responses, with visual results in about 15 minutes. Septest is targeting a UK launch in the second half of 2027.
What's the money for? The funds support assay optimization, analytical validation, manufacturing, and regulatory preparation. Septest is running a blinded clinical evaluation with Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and exploring pre-hospital use with South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust. A grant from the National Institute for Health and Care Research backs the clinical work.
What could go wrong? The 2027 timeline depends on development milestones, validation studies, and regulatory clearance. Rivals have also moved first: Cytovale won FDA clearance for its IntelliSep test in January 2023, and Immunexpress cleared SeptiCyte RAPID in November 2021, both pursuing US hospital deployments.
The signal: Sepsis caused an estimated 49 million cases and 11 million deaths worldwide in 2017, roughly one in five global deaths, according to a study in The Lancet. With that scale of need, a low-cost, analyzer-free test could find a place in frontline care — if it clears the regulatory bar.
Read more: founderland.ai
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
